When did Warcraft lore start going down? (10 options researched)

[Adunai]

Alright, I would like to ask you what point in the history of Warcraft lore you would point out to as the point of no return? When the changes have accumulated so bad, it can never be salvaged anymore in any case?

I will go through each release and list the bad about it from what I know myself. Playing devil's advocate in a number of places.

0. Warcraft II will be the baseline for all Warcraft lore. W:O&H lore was too underdeveloped to count.

1. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.
1) Turned Orcs into noble savages that had been demon-influenced all along when they had been behaving nasty in the previous titles.
2) No Dragons in the Horde. No Ogres either (until the Rexxar campaign, but even then in lore only, not in gameplay).
3) No Gnomes. No Stormwind either.

2. Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.
1) The story, albeit very epic, was told too fast, with too drastic deeds.
2) Blood Elves removed from the Alliance.
3) Sylvanas remained in the Plaguelands instead of chasing Arthas.
4) The Admiral Proudmoore fiasco (arguably).

3. WoW Vanilla.
1) The Forsaken joining the Horde.
2) Night Elves joining the Alliance.
3) Night Elven gender roles butchered.
4) Tauren Druids. Orc Warlocks.
5) The Scarlet Crusade existing (in place of Stormwind reclamation parties).
6) High Elves existing.

4. WoW: TBC.
1) The Eredar-Draenei retcon.
2) The Draenei Shaman retcon.
3) Blood Elves joining the Horde.
4) Blood Elves getting the Sunwell back.
5) Lady Vashj wasted. Illidan butchered. Kael'thas lolcorrupted.
6) Dimensional ships.
7) Uncorrupted Orcs.
8) The Outland zones retcons.

5. WoW WotLK.
1) Dalaran rebuilt (you'all kids are saying undying demons made RoC cheap. I say that it was flying Dalaran that made Archimonde cheap).
2) Ner'zhul butchered.
3) The Lich King butchered.
4) Northrend not being fully covered in snow.
5) Incessant pandering to the Northern European demographic.

6. WoW Cata.
1) Night Elven Mages. Goblin Priests.
2) The Neltharion lore was bad.
3) Theramore broke neutrality.
4) The Neptulon incident.

7. WoW MoP.
1) Theramore wasted as the last holdout of the Kirin Tor, High Elves and Lordaeron refugees.
2) Garrosh wasted as an honourable Orc.
3) A non-Orc chosen as Warchief.
4) Incessant pandering to the East Asian demographic.

8. WoW WoD.
1) Time travel on a massive scale.
2) The demons-only-die-in-the-Nether clarification.
3) Various Orc and Draenei lore retcons.

9. WoW Legion.
1) The Broken Isles retcon.
2) Argus too small and destroyed (my biggest gripe).
3) The Army of the Light retcon.
4) The Illidan retcon (actually good, imo).
5) A non-Orc non-male chosen as Warchief.

10. WoW BfA.
1) The Burning of Teldrassil (the only good thing, but it's an unpopular opinion).
2) Confusing Horde leadership story lines.
3) Confusing strategies.
4) Void Elves.
5) No underwater Nazjatar.

That's about all. I myself incline to agree with the folks on the Reforged forums on that TFT was the pinnacle of storytelling but vanilla was still passable, whereas TBC started the inadvertent, yet irreversible decline into nothingness and boredom.

Even though there are parts that I tend to be open about - such as the addition of the Old Gods in vanilla, or Kael'thas being super edgy and badass in TBC, or Theramore having a unique population of High Elves, or Lor'themar opening talks about the readmission to the Alliance, or Illidan having desired the fall of the Legion all along, or... indeed, Sylvanas burning the tree and being greyer than a typical WoW player can comprehend - there is still an inexcusable trend downwards.

[Zstr]

since christe golden joined in

[Astalnar]

It's a death by thousand cuts. Slowly but surely all the little mistakes accumulated until we got ourselves BfA in the end.

[Eosia]

The thing is people forget is that they painted themselves into a corner on a few things, like the Burning Legion being the end-all bad guys, and had to retcon. So at no real point did it "go down" really.

[Kyphael]

I was going to say Cataclysm because that's the first expansion I played where I knew the story written sucked, but in retrospect, it was really Burning Crusade given what they did to Illidan and Kael'thas, one of which they had to totally retcon.

[Arrashi]

Cata - aka when they ran out of things that were set up in W3 and started writing original storylines.

[DemonHunter18]

it went downhill since WoW started.

[Aeula]

Finding a definitive point is difficult. There’s been a lot of bad shit in every expansion.

I’d say TBC. Mostly due to them villain batting Kael’thas and Illidan with little to no reason beyond ‘they’d be fun to fight in a raid’.

WotLK turned Arthas into a generic villain.

Cata was just terrible in general.

MoP has some interesting stuff but it also had the stupid civil war storyline dragging everything down.

WoD had arguably the best storytelling (Leveling and the warlords prequels), but had a terrible story made up of stupid ideas.

Legion was ridiculous and boring at the same time. After the pre-patch the Legion stopped being a threat entirely. Forcing Alliance and Horde to team up to deal with such a weakly portrayed enemy was dumb.

BfA is just cancerous. It’s infected every aspect of the game down to the very core. I don’t think there’s any coming back now.

Everything before TBC was alright bar some stupid books that Knakk wrote. And the RPG’s.

Warcraft has always made a better world than a story. Sadly the world doesn’t get much attention and they even turned it into a character.

[Wildberry]

Warcraft lore took some hits with the launch of WoW, but it's something that could've been fixed easily, especially with a hypothetical WCIV.
BC's handling of Illidan, and Kael'thas was ridiculous, as was Blood Elves joining the Horde, but again we can recover from a few characters being wasted, and Blood Elves could've been fixed with WCIV.

WotLK did well enough, the things it screwed up are relatively minor, no real lasting damage.

Cataclysm is where things really started to go south, but at that point we could have recovered from it. It would've taken a lot of work, unlike Vanilla, but Cataclysm could've been a weak point in Warcraft Lore with lasting consequences fixed elsewhere.

MoP is where things really started to fall apart. Considering MoP set the stage for WoD, and WoD was the official "Point of No Return - Just Retcon ALL of WoW" mark, my vote goes to MoP.

[RangerDaz]

For me Cata became the turning point for bad writing.

Green jesus ruined thrall.
Deathwing story was bad, really bad.

MoP had a decent storyline though.

Then came WoD, and the endgame content started dragging the dame down

[Methodd]

I would say tbc had a lot of lore problems, but it is still seen as a good expansion because of the gameplay. BFA didn't drastically alter a lot of gameplay, but it is a culmination of all the poor design decisions over the years. So basically, the lore was bad in both tbc and bfa but bfa doesn't have good gameplay to make up for it.

[Dagoth Ur]

Probably not that simple. It's a snowball effect of accumulated bad decisions where each expansion contributed to some extent.
Majority of those WoW could still come back from though, but the ones you can't like those in WoD or Vanilla, when factions were first grouped up, were most affecting.

Personally, for meta reasons and considering what we're dealing with now, I'll single out MoP. This is when their obsession with chastisizing, cookie fortune good vs evil moralizing and anti war messaging first started. I just can't stand those.

[Lupinemancer]

Option 11: When people began crying because they didn't get their way, which caused Blizzard to try and satisfy the kids, which destroyed the Lore.

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Warcraft lore was never anything more than akin to a generic saturday morning cartoon idk why people want to act like Shakespeare was writing the lore until recently x expansion

Funny you say that cuz I find it funny how people actually try to pretend the Lore is bad, or was from the start. I find it hilarious that those kids are so stubbornly refusing to accept anything good about the Lore. Even if it has fallen a bit, it is still pretty good, if you would just open your eyes and pay attention to what is actually important. It's as if they are excepting everyone else to agree with their childish views if they just keep saying it enough. Like they think it'll become reality if they just pretend it is so.
Oh well, kids will be kids I guess.

[Varodoc]

Actually the idea of Blood Elves messing with the Void is a very old one that dates back to High Astromancer Solarian in The Burning Crusade, who was a Blood Elf capable of transforming into a fearsome Voidwalker. So blame TBC for the Void Elves. Granted, it's stupid to say that a single race, despite its somewhat lackluster background, caused the downfall of a game's story.

[Terongor]

As overall story went down hill after TFT. Story in vanilla-wotlk butchered and wasted most chars. Cata started expanding but it isn't good either only thing fresh and good in wow story was mop but started shitting on again wod, legion and BfA

[matrix123mko]

I wouldn't say it's unsalvageable but I am sure that BfA is the worst.

[Voidwielder]

It was salami sliced. It was nothing grandiose in the first place but I will argue that Arthas storyline was emotionally charged, at least for some of us. I still remember gaping at the screen, ''How could he?!'' during THAT WC3 mission.

I think the real problem is that MMORPG genre is ill-suited to develop coherent and tight storyline(s).

I really, really loved what they did with the Thunder King in MoP, that was cool and engaging. A good raid on top of that too.

[Soon-TM]

Cata - aka when they ran out of things that were set up in W3 and started writing original storylines.

Pretty much this, although BC (even if I liked it a lot, and is one of my top xpacs) was quite !@#&ty from a lore perspective. The Draenei retcon was bad enough, but what they did to Vashj, Kael and Illidan... Oh dear. Turning some relatively well developed - and actually likeable - characters into raid bosses because... um, reasons, was dumb as all !@#&.

Especially with Illidan, I mean... The guy was released from prison by Tyrande herself, he killed several demons, including a major dreadlord, he helped to save Tyrande and acknowledged his (big) faults, to the point of exiling voluntarily. Then he took on another bunch of demons, led the fight to the Lich King's doorstep, suffered a humiliating defeat... But he was the big bad all of a sudden? Give me a break Blizz.

[Super Dickmann]

TBC is the nadir of story writing, but both Mists and BFA likely inflicted more long term damage to the narrative.

[Wildberry]

Option 11: When people began crying because they didn't get their way, which caused Blizzard to try and satisfy the kids, which destroyed the Lore.

If it wasn't for those gosh darned crying kids, Blizzard would've been able to masterfully craft an epic!

Even if it has fallen a bit, it is still pretty good

Hilarious.

Actually the idea of Blood Elves messing with the Void is a very old one that dates back to High Astromancer Solarian in The Burning Crusade, who was a Blood Elf capable of transforming into a fearsome Voidwalker. So blame TBC for the Void Elves. Granted, it's stupid to say that a single race, despite its somewhat lackluster background, caused the downfall of a game's story.

I'm not sure one Blood Elf dabbling the void really justifies Void Elves of all things.

I wouldn't say it's unsalvageable but I am sure that BfA is the worst.

How would you propose we recover from the previous few expansions?